Author Geneva Woodruff and Frankie read their new book, “Dear Frankie: What Dogs Really Think,” which is now available in hardcover, paperback, and in digital formats. Submitted photo.
By Beth David, Editor
It all started when some friends got a puppy during the pandemic and they had no idea what they had gotten themselves into. They called Geneva Woodruff and told her all kinds of things about how difficult it was.
“And I was very amused by this,” said Dr Woodruff.
As a joke, she wrote the puppy a letter from her own little four-legged child, Frankie, a schnauzer poodle, with some tips on living with humans.
“Frankie said, look, these people think they are your parents,” Dr. Woodruff said, adding that parenting is “the most competitive sport in America.”
And then, her friends’ new puppy wrote back to Frankie.
Everyone was in full lockdown by then, so the letters were a fun distraction. Someone suggested it would make a good newspaper column, a doggie advice column.
Dr. Woodruff said she was very isolated during the pandemic, and the column became a great project for her. She contacted the Neighb News, and the first column ran on January 28, 2021. It has run every week since then (see page 10). It has also been picked up by a few other papers, a dog magazine, and even a child magazine for about a year each.
Then someone suggested a collection of some of the published columns would make a good coffee table book.
“So I started batting that idea around,” she said.
One of the challenges, though, is that a coffee table book requires a lot of high quality photos. She could not afford to buy them online or hire a photographer to take them.
“I came upon this program that generated pictures through AI,” said Dr. Woodruff. “And that’s how the pictures got in.”
The thing though, said Dr. Woodruff, 85, is that she grew up pre-television.
“I grew up with Walt Disney where animals talked,” she said. “As a child, I always thought these animals were real. I thought Bambi was real. I thought Thumper was real. So for me it was wasn’t a big deal to think of animals talking about their lives and their relationships.”
She also said it was just good for her sanity during COVID.
The book is available locally at Euro Phoenix, 24 Center Street, Fairhaven, and on Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com. “Dear Frankie: What Dogs Really Think,” 93 pages. Hardcover, $19.99; paperback, $15.00, Kindle, $6.99.
Dr. Woodruff said she is already working on a second book.
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